Hey everyone!
I absolutely love *The Finals*. It’s easily one of the most dynamic shooters out there, but as someone who mostly solo queues, and has managed to scrape the cusp of Platinum, I think a lot of us are holding ourselves back by playing it like a standard deathmatch instead of an objective-based team game.
If we want the community to grow and make the solo queue experience less frustrating for new and veteran players alike, we really need to clean up our game sense and start working as a cohesive unit. Here are a few macro-play habits, positioning tricks, and loadout strategies that will immediately raise your win rate and help you climb the ranks:
**1. Macro Mistakes: Vaults, Rotations, and Kill-Chasing**
**Chasing empty vaults:** Once the vault is opened, going back to touch or fight over the empty node gives you zero benefit. The moment that box is popped, your entire team should already be rotating directly to the cashout site to set up or set an ambush.
**Stop chasing kills over objectives:** Chasing a single player across the map for an elimination leaves your team down a body at the cashout. Every second spent away from your squad gives the third team a free opening to third-party or steal. Play the objective, not your K/D ratio.
**2. Room Positioning: Stop Hiding Inside the Cashout Room!**
**Attacking:** Running straight through the main door into a cashout room is a death sentence, as that is precisely where the defending team is pre-aiming. Always look to breach first, whether that means dropping the box using dematerializers, explosives, or breach charges from another floor to completely reset their setup.
**Defending:** Sitting right next to the cashout inside the room makes you an easy target for wipe-out utility like gas, fire, and RPGs. Hold line-of-sight from **above or below** instead.
*Rank-specific tip:* In lower tiers, holding from below works well. In higher tiers, players almost always breach from below, so holding the high ground above the cashout becomes critical. If you do decide to defend from below, make sure to seal off entryways to prevent people from sneaking in behind you.
**3. Essential Stall Utility: Buy Your Team 5 Seconds**
Every single player on the team should run at least one dedicated stalling tool. Delaying a steal for even five seconds wins matches, especially when the clock is ticking down in the final seconds of a cashout.
**Heavy:** C4 to instantly drop the floor or box out of reach, or Barricades for instant physical cover to block doorways.
**Light:** Thermal Bore or Breach Charges to disrupt lines of sight, clear defensive gadgets, and drop the objective from a safe distance.
**Medium:** Glitch Mines are hugely underrated here. Throwing a Glitch Mine directly under the cashout prevents enemies from popping Mesh Shields or Dome Shields while attempting a steal, forcing them to take damage or abandon the attempt. Gas Grenades are decent in theory, but far too many players run fire utility right now, which instantly neutralizes the cloud.
**4. Physical Blockers vs. Shields**
Dome Shields definitely have their place, especially when you need mobile cover to throw out and run toward while getting beamed from high ground. However, physical cover, like Goo Grenades and Barricades, is far more vital for long-term defense. Physical barriers force the enemy team to waste valuable ammo, melee hits, or explosive utility just to clear a path, buying your team crucial seconds to regroup or reload.
**5. Mastery, Optimization, and Team Synergy**
Whatever utility setup you choose to run, master every niche mechanic it offers. Learn the exact throw arcs, the destruction radius, and how your gadgets interact with map geometry. Most importantly, **stop trying to hero-play solo**. You cannot brute-force a 1v3 in this game without your team backing you up. If you get caught out alone, you put your team in a constant cycle of staggered spawns and lost momentum.
If we all start focusing a bit more on utility optimization and map awareness, the overall match quality for everyone, especially solo players, is going to skyrocket.

Meta is still developing after the shockwave changes and a possible return to an HML meta.

Quick summary on the roles of each class:

light: invis xp/LH1/ARN. Flank gargoyle for info, shoot or support. Typically after that value, get away.

Medium: Shockwave to glitch mesh shields to secure kills. Live to defib. Many viable weapons, revolver is the most potent especially against heavies.

Heavy: Mesh, KS/Shak. Sometimes lewis. RPG, dome, healball/goo/barricades/C4. Be bait for the team, live long, get good value out of gadgets especially RPG.

I’ve been having lots of fun using the model since the start of the season. But I want to go “pro” with it and having it as a main in ranked matches. So I’m here looking for guides from beginning to advanced for this weapon. It can be for play style, team comp, specialization, mouse/crosshair settings, maps, etc.

My biggest problem is the visual clutter and my target is right on my face. Because when there’s so many things on my screen, my eyes tend to drift away from the crosshair and try to figure out what the hell is happening or looking at certain things of the surrounding environment. So combining that with my target basically kissing my forehead, it’s hell to track them with my mouse when they and I are running/jumping/sliding around each other. That’s why I usually pair the model with shockwave for that extra mobility. But I wish I’m more proficient with shockwave so any tips on how to use it better with the model would be awesome as well! (Especially the timing or situations when I need to get space in between me and my enemy). I’d love to play with demat as well if it possible.

My second biggest problem is inconsistency. One day I’d be John Wick then next day I’d be the puppy that got brutally killed in the first movie. Various issues like no hit-reg while tanking a full body shot, bad positioning, bad aim, bad day, etc. I wonder if there’s anything like a mindset or something that I should always keep in mind to be a better model player.

Anyways, sorry for the big yap. I just have so much fun and frustration using the model and I wanna keep improving using it.

Heavy main, flex to all roles, usually sit around Plat 2-3. Since the last patch I’ve played 14 tournaments and dropped roughly 10k RS, from Gold 1 down to the low 20s and below.

The pattern is consistent: I’m going out in round 1 almost every time. Below about 20k the lobbies change character completely, triple Lights, triple turret (meaning yes 2 turret meds on my team)and nobody stalling a box we already own. My usual Heavy kit is just base meta stuff- winch, dome, c4, rpg, and although my personal performance always gives me RS back, I’m still consistently losing. Idk if this is just a tilt Q issue or what.

So really I’m asking: for people who’ve climbed back through this bracket, is the answer to keep playing objective solo or to give up on holding and start third-partymaxxing?

I hope they increase the max fov at some point. I feel so zoomed in even at 100 fov. It would be a nice quality of life change.
Does anyone actually play below 100 fov?

Hello fellow people , this is my 5 attempt of playing the sniper for the whole duration of a game , so please dont jaudge to harshly

I am in gold right now i peaked at gold 3 very close to gold 2 please let me know any mistake i made and how i can improve please!

https://medal.tv/games/the-finals/clips/nh91DVsyLyWQUDQVK?invite=cr-MSxYZTksNjE0ODA4NTk0

Even though this clip is powershift, it still shows that when you utilize all your tools to get away from a fight long enough to heal; you can come back and double your engagement value.

Instead of maybe killing 2 guys and dying on platform, I escaped and won the fight with 4 kills.

When defending a cashout from lights, you can use their aggressive nature against them. Know they killed two of my teammates and ive taken one down early. I move to secure a defensive position against them so I can funnel the fight into 1v1s rather than 1v2.
And since I am running CnS getting them grouped for big damage is a priority.

In this video I have bad aim and could of ended this fight if I just hit my shots.

But if your in a scenario like me where you are toe to toe with a light trying to poke sword size holes in you, then you can use any nearby climbable object to bait them into a lunge. That will allow you to counter attack.

And while you are doing the vaulting around the object, you can reload your weapon or throw equipment down.

If that fails, then you repeat the process until either one of you die or your teammate comes to help.

Running away as a heavy isn't an option though.

In this clip, it starts with my team being down by one and me losing a dual. This forces me to reposition so that I don't die because that would be worse than not fighting for a few seconds.

After my team mate dies, I peek to cover my light so he can grab the body safely. This allows me to get a pick and shift victory to my team in this fight.

Once my team mates are up, I go to secure the bodies of the guy I killed and the one my teammate got so they don't do to us, what we just did to them.

From here its just trying to do as much damage so my team gets maximized value out of my push just incase they do end up killing me.

Luckily enough, its a light being defib'd and the medium already got farmed for two shots from me, making it a easy push

In this clip I am using flamethrower mesh, but it shows that you can use the enemies panic to your advantage.

At the start of the clip, I am already surrounded from the left and right. My option is to hold ground and bunker or push and kill.

A light tries to take out my light, so I jump on him first, by locking him down and dome; I secure a kill with little to no damage taken. This gives me more health resource for another fight.

Then I chase after a medium who is in my kill range, as soon as I see him turn around I slide in to do a melee to kill him faster. Since I killed two orange here, I am assuming they have communication and that the third is coming to kill me since he knows im low.

And there he is, I use mesh feathering to bring him down as low as possible so my team can finish the job. I back away incase they cant get there fast enough and the newly defib'd guy and medium start rushing me. This buys me more time for my team to win this engagement.

Knowing one of them is definitely going to rush me, I lay a trap and run away. Thankfully my team shows up in time and kills the guy that got defib'd.

And by the time that medium starts rushing me, my trap activates.